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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"Twelve years after Hurricane Ivan destroyed a Taylor Energy Co. platform in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government has finally started investigating how oil and gas that is still leaking from its wells damages natural resources."

"Eloy Jacquez lives in the house his parents built on Los Lujans Road in 1948. There was no water in Santa Cruz then. The family waited several more years before the first well was drilled just up the street, next to land used as an informal waste dump."

"The European Union's top court ordered Poland on Friday to immediately halt large-scale logging in an ancient protected forest, one of many cases that has pitted the nationalist, eurosceptic government in Warsaw against the bloc."

"Sen. Lisa Murkowski said today that a tense phone conversation with President Trump earlier this week led to yesterday's call from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who reportedly told both Alaska GOP senators that the Energy and Natural Resources chairwoman's vote against the motion to proceed to the health care debate would influence the administration's resource development policies in the Last Frontier State."

"President Trump's reported pick to lead U.S. EPA's Office of Water has represented states and industry in lawsuits against the agency — some of which were filed by then-Oklahoma Attorney General and now EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt."

"LAS VEGAS -- The robust and agressive takedown of part of Ukraine’s power grid by hackers served as a wakeup call for cyber experts and exposed just how much America does not know about foreign operatives’ ability to strike critical U.S. infrastructure."

"The U.S. House of Representatives brushed aside Democrats' efforts to preserve federal funding for clean energy and energy efficiency as it voted to approve a large spending bill Thursday that would slash those programs by 45 percent while maintaining federal support for fossil energy research and development."

"The only way to know exactly what’s in a wildfire’s smoke is to sample straight from the haze. So during the Rim Fire in Yosemite—which emitted so much smoke it formed its own clouds—a NASA DC-8 passenger plane and an Alpha fighter jet each crisscrossed through the plume. On both planes, scientists had created an in-flight lab to measure exactly what the fire was producing."

"There is a man among us who talks to the bees. They spoke recently on a warm Sunday morning in my driveway. Nick Wigle was standing with his hands on his hips, squinting down at a small gas-meter vault packed with 3,000 stinging residents. “All right, guys,” he said. “We’re going to take this nice and easy.” The hive buzzed back, its low tone telegraphing the gentleness unique to Santa Barbara's bees."

"A close-up of ice melting in brilliant sunshine is the first thing you see in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. It's gorgeous — snow crystals glistening, moisture dripping from them into a pool of water so pure and clear it makes you thirsty."